Of the many scandals associated with the Obama administration, two stand out above the rest: the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal and the current disinformation campaign surrounding the assassination of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya. The president and his minions, aided by media that are “all in” with respect to getting Obama re-elected, have managed to tamp down most of the damming information about the Fast and Furious scandal. They also remain committed to putting out enough conflicting information about the Benghazi scandal that Americans become confused about what actually happened and perhaps lose interest as a result. And in light of the seriousness of these debacles, individuals willing to hold the administration to account seem to be in short supply.

It is critical to remember that these are not the garden variety, “they said-we said” types of scandals that have arisen in past administrations. As a result of the attack in Benghazi and the running of guns into Mexico people were murdered. Hundreds of people. With respect to Fast and Furious, Univision, apparently one of the few media organizations with an ounce of integrity, revealed the scope of such carnage. They have identified several of the massacres committed using guns “walked” into Mexico, including the killing of 16 young people attending a party in a residential area of Ciudad Juárez in January of 2010.

Last Friday, the network released a promo of their efforts. “Univision News’ Investigative Unit was also able to identify additional guns that escaped the control of ATF agents and were used in different types of crimes throughout Mexico,” the network revealed. “Furthermore, some of these guns–none of which were reported by congressional investigators–were put in the hands of drug traffickers in Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. A person familiar with the recent congressional hearings called Univision’s findings ‘the holy grail’ that Congress had been searching for.”

Yet while Congress has been searching, the Obama administration has been stonewalling. Despite more than a year’s worth of Congressional investigations conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Senate Judiciary Committee–both of which were precipitated by the murder of American Border Agent Brian Terry–the essential questions of who knew what and when, and what purpose the program was meant to serve, remain unanswered.

An internal investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG)–essentially the DOJ investigating itself–was trumpeted by the mainstream media as the definitive report on the matter. Yet the facts say otherwise. Kevin O’Reilly, one of the key players the IG sought out, “declined through his personal counsel our request for an interview.” Furthermore, the White House refused to produce internal documents related to the investigation, claiming such documents were “beyond the purview” of the inspector general. CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson, one of the few reporters willing to follow this scandal wherever it leads, reveals just how far the White House was willing to go to avoid congressional threats to subpoena O’Reilly. “Just days after [lead ATF official on the case Special Agent in Charge Bill] Newell testified to Congress on July 26, 2011 that he’d shared information with O’Reilly, whom he described as a long time friend, O’Reilly was transferred to Iraq and not available for questioning,” writes Attkisson.

Add President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege to the mix, which allowed Eric Holder to thumb his nose at congressional investigators’ subpoenas, along with the continuing refusal of the DOJ to cooperate (despite Holder being found in contempt of Congress), and the stunning level of administration callousness is clear. In short, the preservation of bureaucratic careers trumps a genuine investigation into hundreds of murders.

Re: Operativo Rápido y Furioso, ¿quién es el responsable?

Equally as callous is the mainstream media’s calculated indifference to this scandal. Despite the pile of corpses this utterly misguided program produced, they sought to make moral equivalence to a Bush-era program called Operation Wide Receiver, where no one was killed. Furthermore, the media herd ran with the idea that Eric Holder was exonerated, even as they largely ignored the reality that the report said no such thing, and that the OIG reports directly to the Attorney General.

The administration’s icy indifference was again on display following the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. The Obama team’s ongoing attempts to brazenly lie their way through this scandal have been fairly well-documented. Even some of the president’s more reliable useful ****s have been cowed by the level of utter duplicity demonstrated by this administration’s efforts to obscure the truth.

Yet what remains largely under radar, save for the effort of conservative news outlets, is the documentation of this president’s twisted priorities. One day after American officials in Benghazi were murdered, and their bodies were dragged through the streets, President Obama saw no reason to alter his campaign schedule. He attended a fundraiser in Las Vegas, where he told a crowd of 8,000 adoring fans about the “tough day that we’ve had today.” After a brief tribute to the four slain Americans, it was back to the class warfare rhetoric that is the hallmark of his re-election campaign.

That’s pretty callous. But it was his “60 Minutes” interview with Steve Kroft that should disgust every decent American. Kroft asked Obama if recent developments in the Middle East have given him any pause about his support for the governments that came to power during so-called Arab Spring. “I said even at the time this was going to be a rocky path,” Obama answered. “I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road,” he added. Four dead Americans, including the first ambassador killed since the 1979 murder of Adolph Dubs in Afghanistan — during Carter administration — are considered “bumps in the road”?

It is difficult to imagine such a callous characterization being ignore by the mainstream media, but they remained true to form. In a speech given at an Accuracy in Media (AIM) conference last Thursday, former Democratic Pollster Pat Caddell put the media’s role in perspective. “This press corps serves at the pleasure of this White House and President, led by people like Ezra Klein and JournoList, where they plot the stories together,” said Caddell.

He aimed his most scathing words at the coverage of the Benghazi attack: “First of all we’ve had nine day of lies over what happened because [the Obama administration] can’t dare say it’s a terrorist attack, and the press won’t push this….If a President of either party…had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified!” he contended. “It would have been–it should have been the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s ‘flying over Katrina’ moment. But nothing was said at all, and nothing will be said,” he added.

Caddell is somewhat in error. In fact something was said. Mitt Romney was excoriated for “politicizing” the debacle.

As for Obama, even as the ongoing scandals of Fast and Furious and Benghazi continue to deteriorate, it remains almost certain no one will call this administration or its standard-bearer to account for their blood-chilling indifference. They are people who have amply demonstrated that honor, respect and decency can be brushed aside in favor of political expediency as easily as one brushes lint off one’s suit jacket. And the silent media, which both forgive and forget the pile of bodies that have accrued in two major scandals, is equally reprehensible.

Re: Operativo Rápido y Furioso, ¿quién es el responsable?

Perspective: No Body Count from Watergate but Hundreds Dead from Fast and Furious

by AWR Hawkins

6 Oct 2012

Watergate is arguably the most sinister crime a Democrat can find to present to the American people when trying to silence a Republican. But it pales in comparison to the lies, illegal gun sales, weapons trafficking, and wholesale slaughter of innocents we've seen as a result of Fast and Furious.

Think about it -- Watergate was a break-in, the goal of which was **noallow** some "dirt" on Democrats to help Richard Nixon during his re-election bid in 1972. Nixon, the man vilified for it, didn't even know about it until after the break-in had already happened, and his crime was covering it up once he learned of it.

He had to resign to avoid being impeached for covering up a break-in in which no one was physically harmed.

Now, jump to 2009 and the launchh of operation Fast and Furious under President Barack Obama; 2,500 guns were sold to criminals or to straw purchasers who knowingly intended to pass the guns to criminals. Background checks for the purchasers were done away with and in some cases, the money to buy the guns was supplied at taxpayers' expense.

Because of this, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has relayed tales of individuals on food stamps coming into a gun store in the Phoenix area with brown bags full of money and purchasing hundreds of guns.

The vast majority of these guns were then smuggled across the U.S./Mexico border while the ATF and DOJ looked the other way, ostensibly hoping the guns would be passed to Mexican cartel members so the U.S. government could make arrests.

For the record, we're still waiting on those arrests.

Over a year after Fast and Furious began, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down by men armed with Fast and Furious weapons on the southwest border, and hundreds of Mexican citizens have been killed with weapons smuggled into Mexico during the operation.

Moreover, early on in the operation (January 30, 2010), 14 teenagers at a birthday party near Juarez were massacred by men armed with Fast and Furious weapons.

And at every turn in the road, as Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) have tried to investigate Fast and Furious, there have been cover-ups, changes in testimony, and withheld evidence.

The bottom line -- Watergate was less than child's play compared to Fast and Furious.

The refrain started many weeks, even months, before the election, but its frequency and intensity has increased nearly exponentially since Nov. 6.

"I don't know if we can survive another four years of this," people say. Or, "do you think we can survive four more years of this?" Even Bill Kristol, not prone to defeatism, speculated on what might happen "even if America can survive the next four years of Obama." [Emphasis added.] The words aren't coming from alarmists. They come in face-to-face conversations, or in emails, or on the phone. They come from Washington, from New York, from New Jersey, from Minnesota, from Alabama, from New Orleans -- from all over. Serious, ordinary people, some of whom live and breathe politics and some of whom pay almost no attention to current affairs, aren't panicking or exaggerating. They are really worried about what this man in the White House will do now. And they're really worried about whether America as we know it can survive.

It is not an idle worry. Barack Obama and his minions play for keeps. And they are playing for a vastly different America than the one with which we have been accustomed for 224 years of this constitutional republic. Fight a war in Libya without even asking for a congressional resolution? No problem. Appoint executive officers without Senate approval, when the Senate is still in session? Sure. Issue executive orders directly contrary to law, on multiple occasions? Of course. Refuse to enforce duly constituted laws? Check. Repeatedly question the very legitimacy of the Supreme Court? Check. Refuse to honor congressional subpoenas and legitimate Freedom of Information requests? Ignore court orders (about offshore drilling) so flagrantly that you are found officially in contempt of court? Insult or even abandon allies? Whisper to foreign leaders of traditionally adversarial lands that you will have "more flexibility" after re-election? Deliberately cover up deadly mistakes on the Mexican border and in North Africa? Check, check, check, check, and check.

This man runs a vote-fraud-enabling, military-vote-suppressing, domestic-energy-destroying, debt-exploding, credit-limit-undermining, defense-gutting, abusive-regulation-promulgating, power-centralizing, religious-liberty-attacking, crony-corporatism-expanding, Constitution-trampling administration. He politicizes everything and demeans politics and the presidency simultaneously. His opponent (according to his closest political associates) was a "felon." The opponent was proximately responsible for a woman's cancer death, deliberately outsourced jobs, and led a "war on women." Women, meanwhile, should look to government for sustenance from cradle to grave, should vote as if giving up their virginity, and should "vote like [their] lady parts depend on it." Attack, attack, attack; demean, demean, demean; trivialize, trivialize, trivialize; and never once outline a second-term agenda other than demonizing the wealthy and confiscating their wealth. This is a man using the presidency to serve his own power, no matter what the cost, rather than honoring the power of the presidency by the restraint inherent in treating the office as greater than the man who holds it.

Obama discards promises with astonishing regularity, prevaricates about the past with impunity, uses race as a cudgel while claiming to unite us, taxes the middle class (e.g., on medical devices) while saying he would never do so, and guts welfare reform while claiming he's strengthening it. His mentor was a Communist; his top aide's in-laws and grandfather were major Communist activists; his chief political strategist worked for Communist-linked journalists; he started his political career with a fund-raiser at the house of domestic terrorists; he repeatedly and enthusiastically said the man who most deeply influenced his faith was a preacher in whose pews he sat for 20 years while the preacher spread racial hatred and anti-American venom (after which, according to the preacher himself, a close Obama associate offered to "buy" the preacher's silence); he got a sweetheart deal on his mansion via a financial alliance with a crook named Rezko; and he himself wrote that he made a conscious decision while still a very young adult to embrace racial grievances and hang out with hard-left counter-culturists.

Re: Does Obama Doom America?.

Is there the slightest thing in that background to suggest that he loves the same America most Americans love?

"Voting is the best revenge," he said. How instructive. Revenge for what? Is it revenge against "bitter," middle class Americans who "cling" to "guns and religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them"? Is that why we need to "spread the wealth"? Or why we must not reform America but "transform" it?

And that's just Obama's person. His policies are worse. This nation absolutely cannot survive much more of his deliberately created debt. Our economy is being stifled by 68 regulations per day -- 6,125 regulations or regulatory notices in just the 90 days leading up to Nov. 12. Our medical system cannot survive Obamacare -- with doctors retiring at record rates, or refusing to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients, with premiums rising through the roof, with medical-device companies already cutting back on research and development, and with increasing numbers of companies dropping insurance coverage of their employees.

And that's not even to mention the horrifying dangers of a desperately weakened defense force, a refusal to call terrorism by its name or fight it accordingly, and a betrayal of allies combined with kowtowing to powers antagonistic to everything about the American nation.

Can we survive all this? Well, as Ronald Reagan would say, weare, after all, Americans. We are a rather hearty people, and an inherently decent people too. But never, ever, not even under Jimmy Carter, were we led by a president who thinks the United States has been anything but an overwhelming force for good in the world. Until now. And that should frighten us.

In my first post-election column four years ago, I warned that Obama's Alinskyites would first find a way to steal a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (check), eventually try to undermine the filibuster entirely (check), liberalize laws and practices against vote fraud (check), abuse the power of the Justice Department (check), tilt the playing field in favor of unions, use regulations like a cudgel, inspire radical "street demonstrations" (check-check-check), and incrementally but steadily erode our civil rights (HHS mandate, anyone?).

All of that is child's play compared to what Obama can do now that he no longer faces re-election, now that he can appoint more and more judges to rubber-stamp his abuses, now that he can issue more executive orders and administrative fiats, now that he can use the full and awesome power of the federal behemoth he has so assiduously expanded in size, scope, and authority. Unless we watch out, one fears, columns such as this one will be described as seditious, and our speech rights will be as threatened as the religious liberties of Catholic charities and Baptist hospitals already are.

These things can happen, though, only if we don't fight back. If this be sedition (which it isn't), let the Obamites make the most of it. At some point the sleeping American public will rouse itself and insist that we are indeed Americans, and we are better and freer and stronger than the Eric Holders of the world think we are. The Obamites will not succeed. We will not let them.